Case Study Tesco Abstract

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©2013 Joe Tidd, John Bessant 

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Case Study - Tesco 

 

 

Abstract

 

 

This case examines the market entry of the UK’s largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco’s 

launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold 

move, notwithstanding the firm’s considerable success with its overseas investment strategy 

(which within ten years has resulted in more than 50% of the firm’s operating space being 

outside its ‘home’ market). It contextualises the study by taking a historical view of innovation 

in the retail industry, which reveals that generally - and certainly for the most part of the 20th 

Century – innovations have dominantly flowed from the US to the UK. The paper suggests that 

Tesco’s US experiment is unusual both in terms of the innovatory aspects of its market entry and 

the reversal in that conventional direction of knowledge transfer. 

The Fresh & Easy story is then examined in terms of ten ‘dimensions of innovation’ involved in 

the market entry. The paper concludes by drawing out from these ‘dimensions of innovation’ a 

number of important issues for management scholarship raised by the study, stressing the need 

to incorporate insights from a wider social science literature. 

 

This case is based on continuing research by

 

Professor Michelle Lowe, Lead Innovation Fellow AIM (Advanced Institute of Management 

Research) and

 

Professor of Retail Management, University of Surrey. If you have any questions or comments 

please contact her at: School of Management

 

University of Surrey Guildford 

GU2 6XH 

[e-mail]